Killiecrankie1689.scot

Advanced studies for dualling the A9 at Killiecrankie were started 4 years ago. The scheme that is proposed will mean extending entirely on the northbound side of the existing road. That is the area that is critical to the battle site. The extra width is necessary to create a central reserve, extra carriageways, a hard strip on both sides of each carriageway, a wide verge, a huge embankment and then an area to mark the boundary with, say, a fence. From the diagram of the cross section, it is easy to see how a dual carriageway requires a flat width of 26.1m before even starting to consider the area of cut slopes, embankments, lay-bys or slip roads. The diagram gives a good idea of what the finished road of this standard should contain. But it gives no idea of the actual impact in Killiecrankie. As the whole mile-long stretch on the northbound side will be built on terrain that is sloping, it needs to be filled in order to widen the existing road at the same level.

This kind of design will mean shifting hundreds of thousands of tonnes of material from another area of the A9 project and dumping it along the side of the northbound carriageway of the existing road. Unfortunately the material to be dumped will damage, if not obliterate, some key historic features that are essential for understanding the choreography of the Battle of Killiecrankie.KilliecrAnkie1689 has identified 5 assets, listed in the Inventory of Historic Battlefields, that the proposed route puts at risk. The 5 features are acknowledged in a document called the Inventory of Historic Battlefields. This list of Scotland’s most important battlefields was begun in 2011. Killiecrankie was included in the very first Inventory.

To make matters worse, the design includes embedded mitigation – that means an integral feature of the construction that cannot be separated from it – and other mitigation that was developed during the final study stage ostensibly “to avoid impacts altogether” which actually damage the integrity of the battlefield. Join Forces!